This morning, I experienced the nerd equivalent of a Black Friday $50 iPad sale. At 07:00 CET, the first batch of the much-anticipated Raspberry Pi went on sale, and while Raspberry Pi itself was very properly prepared, the two large international retailers actually selling the device weren't - despite warnings from Raspberry Pi about the enormous amount of traffic that would come their way, the two sites crumbled to dust within seconds. There's good news too - the cheaper model A has seen its RAM doubled at no additional cost.

This is a launch of a very cheap PC by a foundation made up of a small team of people, who have have put together a complex product and released it in a short amount of time. Liz has kept us informed as much as possible (more so than many other projects).

We all know that there is a limited amount of stock available and that manufacturing has not long started, so it stands to reason that not everyone will be able to buy one at first.

Also when something launched for the first time there can be issues that are normally fixed in subsequent batches / releases. It is difficult for retailers to take warnings seriously when this is probably the first time they have done business with the Pi team. However the Pi team will be taken more seriously now that the stock has sold out quickly and many people have registered interest.

Temporarily having a static site is a good strategy for dealing with huge increases in demand when there is limited time or resources. And from time to time websites (this site included) do not load instantly (and can even time out!).

In a few weeks or months there will be new stock and many of today's issues will be resolved.